


Painting With Destiny

by orphan_account



Category: Twisted Princess (Disney Fanart)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:53:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the pale face John was brought to them by Opechancanough, she did not object to her father killing him. She watched the red blood spill on the brown earth, and the earth called to her, told her to return the pale face to the dirt from whence they had come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painting With Destiny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Untherius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/gifts).



> I saw the prompt for Pocahontas and was inspired to write this. It's a rather interesting concept - what would have happened to the exploration of the New World if Jamestown hadn't had the allies of many of the area tribes? This looks into that, just a little bit, through Pocahontas. Most elements of her story - at least in some fashion - remain. 
> 
> Kocoum is also thought to be a transliteration of 'Captain' and not, as Disney made him, a separate person.

As she moves her fingers through the dirt, painting a picture, she thinks of the pale faces, and what they have come to mean. Her people are dying. If they don't die from the weapon of the pale face, they die from the sickness that the pale face brings. Her people can't fight it, the evil spirits that are invading. They have done something to wrong the gods, and they must pay.

For now, she draws; red blood has been spilt and she returns the blood to the earth, asks for Her guidance in what to do with the pale faces. How can they protect themselves, she wonders, when they cannot conceive of the weapons used against them? 

There are talks of peace, her father wishes to make alliance with the pale faces. Her people, huddled in blankets stained with sickness, object.

It takes her a while, but she realises the lure, the trap that her father is setting for the pale faces. It is not a ceremony of peace, but of war.

When the slaughter starts, some of the pale faces escape into the woods. She can only laugh; the pale faces do not know the land as well as her people do. Those that do not die will be found quickly, brought back to her village to beg for their lives before they are slaughtered themselves.

When the pale face John was brought to them by Opechancanough, she did not object to her father killing him. She watched the red blood spill on the brown earth, and the earth called to her, told her to return the pale face to the dirt from whence they had come.

The raids were fast and furious, and she earned herself a place among the men for her quick jabs and rapid retreats. The earth sang with the song of red, and she danced in it during the day, and slept with it in her dreams. 

There were alliances with rival tribes they had to be careful of. Her brothers said she trusted too much that all on this land would reject the pale savages. Such a mistake nearly cost her her life, but a pale face asked the Chief not to kill her, asked to have her for himself. Because the chief wanted an alliance, he agreed. She was a spoil of war, a prisoner, sent to live on the ship of the pale face.

The pale face who wanted her captive was their Captain, called Kocoum, who raped her on his bed below deck. He closed the metal around her ankle and poured the molten over it. Even if her tribe could come for her, they had no way to free her.

She was a spoil of war, and he treated her as such, climbing atop her whenever the desire took him. 

When she was with child, he called her Rebecca, had the holy man pour water over her head. She was being made like them, and she was powerless to stop it. When the time came, he cut the child from her, refused to let her hold her son. It was his mistake in cutting down the chain that bound her so she could birth easily; she waited until they were distracted by the newborn, then leapt from the boat, and swam to safety. 

She was broken, but she returned herself to her people. She was a true warrior, they told her, and in turn, she told her tribe of their plans, of their savagery, of how they planned to kill all the children who did not have a pale face for a father. 

Her father, the embattled chief, had but one option. Her dying people pulled back from the river, followed the forests inland.

She stayed, for revenge.

This time, it was she who captured them; she sought out the child snatched from her womb, slay him while the pale faces could only watch. Kocoum begged for the life of his son, and she only laughed - no child of hers was going to be the son of a pale man. She sat in front of Kocoum - Rolfe was his true name - and skinned the child as one would do a deer. The child was called Thomas, and she used both their names in her ritual, chanting to her ancestors and the earth itself to accept the blood that rained down. 

She left Kocoum the skin of his dead child. It was only fair to leave him a gift, like the gifts his kind was leaving her people. She told her brothers to fashion Kocoum slaves clothes from the skin. It was small, nothing but a child, but they managed, tying the skin around his waist while he writhed on the ground.

They did not have the heavy metal that was like on the ship, but she was creative, and hardened the ropes that bound him with mud and clay. By the time she was done, he could not escape from them no matter how hard he pulled against them.

The skull of the child she fashioned to her belt, wearing it as a reminder of where she had come from, and what the savages would do, if left to their own devices.

They had called their town Jamestown, named after a king.

By the time she and her brothers were done with it, only ashes remained. 

The pale faces had made friends with other tribes in the area; the wars were bloody, violent. Many of her brothers gave their lives protecting the land. 

It wasn't until many years later that she would come across the Kocoum, he was thin, frail. The ropes twined 'round his wrists and ankles that she had sealed with mud and clay remained. He was their prized captive, a reminder to anyone else who dared to land a ship that their savagery was not welcome in these lands. The pale faces had been trying for years to free their Kocoum, to no avail.

She had returned to the former settlement of Jamestown to see him again - to see if he would remember her. When he saw her - and the familiar skull of the child he had forced her to bear, he fell to the ground in anguish. She only laughed. 

She bade him bow to her,and he complied. Her hair fluttered in the wind, the necklace identifying her as a warrior-woman shining bright against the tan of her pelts, stained with the blood of his comrades. Her knife dripped with blood, and for a moment, time stood still. 

She had conquered the pale face, avenged the wrongs against her, and now he bowed before her. She placed the tip of her knife against the back of his neck, and he sang praises to her name, danced with the colors of the wind.

His life would be spared. Again. She always forbid her brothers and the tribes who had joined them, from killing Kocoum - he had tried to conquer her, and he had failed.

He belonged to her, now, and she intended to keep him.


End file.
